Computer Sciences Commons^™

Sketchart: A Pen-Based Tool For Chart Generation And Interaction., Andres Vargas Gonzalez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It has been shown that representing data with the right visualization increases the understanding of qualitative and quantitative information encoded in documents. However, current tools for generating such visualizations involve the use of traditional WIMP techniques, which perhaps makes free interaction and direct manipulation of the content harder. In this thesis, we present a pen-based prototype for data visualization using 10 different types of bar based charts. The prototype lets users sketch a chart and interact with the information once the drawing is identified. The prototype's user interface consists of an area to sketch and touch based elements that will …

Energy Efficient Routing Towards A Mobile Sink Using Virtual Coordinates In A Wireless Sensor Network, Rouhollah Rahmatizadeh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The existence of a coordinate system can often improve the routing in a wireless sensor network. While most coordinate systems correspond to the geometrical or geographical coordinates, in recent years researchers had proposed the use of virtual coordinates. Virtual coordinates depend only on the topology of the network as defined by the connectivity of the nodes, without requiring geographical information. The work in this thesis extends the use of virtual coordinates to scenarios where the wireless sensor network has a mobile sink. One reason to use a mobile sink is to distribute the energy consumption more evenly among the sensor …

Computation Of Boolean Formulas Using Sneak Paths In Crossbar Computing, Alvaro Velasquez

HIM 1990-2015

Memristor-based nano-crossbar computing is a revolutionary computing paradigm that does away with the traditional Von Neumann architectural separation of memory and computation units. The computation of Boolean formulas using memristor circuits has been a subject of several recent investigations. Crossbar computing, in general, has also been a topic of active interest, but sneak paths have posed a hurdle in the design of pervasive general-purpose crossbar computing paradigms. In this paper, we demonstrate that sneak paths in nano-crossbar computing can be exploited to design a Boolean-formula evaluation strategy. We demonstrate our approach on a simple Boolean formula and a 1-bit addition …

Automatic 3d Human Modeling: An Initial Stage Towards 2-Way Inside Interaction In Mixed Reality, Yiyan Xiong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

3D human models play an important role in computer graphics applications from a wide range of domains, including education, entertainment, medical care simulation and military training. In many situations, we want the 3D model to have a visual appearance that matches that of a specific living person and to be able to be controlled by that person in a natural manner. Among other uses, this approach supports the notion of human surrogacy, where the virtual counterpart provides a remote presence for the human who controls the virtual character's behavior. In this dissertation, a human modeling pipeline is proposed for the …

Exploring Sparsity, Self-Similarity, And Low Rank Approximation In Action Recognition, Motion Retrieval, And Action Spotting, Chuan Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of 4 major parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-2), we introduce the overview, motivation, and contribution of our works, and extensively survey the current literature for 6 related topics. In the second part (Chapters 3-7), we explore the concept of "Self-Similarity" in two challenging scenarios, namely, the Action Recognition and the Motion Retrieval. We build three-dimensional volume representations for both scenarios, and devise effective techniques that can produce compact representations encoding the internal dynamics of data. In the third part (Chapter 8), we explore the challenging action spotting problem, and propose a feature-independent unsupervised framework that …

Measuring Security: A Challenge For The Generation, Janusz Zalewski, Steven Drager, William Mckeever, Andrew J. Kornecki

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Daytona Beach

This paper presents an approach to measuring computer security understood as a system property, in the category of similar properties, such as safety, reliability, dependability, resilience, etc. First, a historical discussion of measurements is presented, beginning with views of Hermann von Helmholtz in his 19th century work “Zählen und Messen”. Then, contemporary approaches related to the principles of measuring software properties are discussed, with emphasis on statistical, physical and software models. A distinction between metrics and measures is made to clarify the concepts. A brief overview of inadequacies of methods and techniques to evaluate computer security is presented, followed by …

Study Of Touch Gesture Performance By Four And Five Year-Old Children: Point-And-Touch, Drag-And-Drop, Zoom-In And Zoom-Out, And Rotate, Zainab Hamza

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Past research has focused on children's interaction with computers through mouse clicks, and mouse research studies focused on point-and-click and drag-and-drop. However, More research is necessary in regard to children's ability to perform touch gestures such as point-and-touch, drag-and-drop, zoom-in and zoom-out, and rotate. Furthermore, research should consider specific gestures such as zoom-in and zoom-out, and rotate tasks for young children. The aim of this thesis is to study the ability of 4 and 5 year-old children to interact with touch devices and perform tasks such as: point-and-touch, drag-and-drop, zoom-in and zoom-out, and rotate. This thesis tests an iPad application …

Supporting And Securing Personal Mobile Devices Within An Existing Information Technology Environment, George Allen Patton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Personal mobile devices are becoming integrated into the daily operations of business. Managers are realizing that employees who are allowed to use personal mobile devices to access corporate information systems may reduce costs as users buy their own devices. The problem was that managers have a limited understanding of the need to secure or support personal mobile devices. The purpose of this survey study was to examine the relationship between employees' desire to use personal mobile devices and corporation needs for security and support. Hypotheses were tested by examining the relationships between the requirement to support and secure personal mobile …

Segmentation And Spatial Depth Ridge Detection Of Unorganized Point Cloud Data, James Clark Church

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual 3D data are of interest to a number of fields: medical professionals, game designers, graphic designers, and (in the interest of this paper) ichthyologists interested in the taxonomy of fish. Since the release of the Kinect for the Microsoft XBox, game designers have been interested in using the 3D data returned by the device to understand human movement and translate that movement into an interface with which to interact with game systems. In the medical field, researchers must use computer vision tools to navigate through the data found in CT scans and MRI scans. These tools must segment images …

Is Your Online Data Really Private?, Nathan Pitchaikani

A with Honors Projects

In the present age everyone depends on technology. At least once per day someone uses a machine to help them accomplish their tasks. For example, imagine not using a cell phone for a whole day. These days, machines contain personal information or data about their owner. In most cases this isn’t an issue. However, with technology becoming more advanced day by day, there has become a reason to worry. People are able to illegally enter other people’s computers and steal information. Leading to the point that being able to protect one’s personal data is crucial. Learning how to safeguard one’s …

Performance Improvement Of Distributed Computing Framework And Scientific Big Data Analysis, Praveenkumar Kondikoppa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Analysis of Big data to gain better insights has been the focus of researchers in the recent past. Traditional desktop computers or database management systems may not be suitable for efficient and timely analysis, due to the requirement of massive parallel processing. Distributed computing frameworks are being explored as a viable solution. For example, Google proposed MapReduce, which is becoming a de facto computing architecture for Big data solutions. However, scheduling in MapReduce is coarse grained and remains as a challenge for improvement. Related with MapReduce scheduler when configured over distributed clusters, we identify two issues: data locality disruption and …

Search-Based Model-Driven Loop Optimizations For Tensor Contractions, Ajay Panyala

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Complex tensor contraction expressions arise in accurate electronic structure models in quantum chemistry, such as the coupled cluster method. The Tensor Contraction Engine (TCE) is a high-level program synthesis system that facilitates the generation of high-performance parallel programs from tensor contraction equations. We are developing a new software infrastructure for the TCE that is designed to allow experimentation with optimization algorithms for modern computing platforms, including for heterogeneous architectures employing general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs). In this dissertation, we present improvements and extensions to the loop fusion optimization algorithm, which can be used with cost models, e.g., for minimizing memory …

Space-Efficient Data Structures For String Searching And Retrieval, Sharma Valliyil Thankachan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Let D = {d_1, d_2, ...} be a collection of string documents of n characters in total, which are drawn from an alphabet set Sigma =[sigma] ={1,2,3,...sigma}. The top-k document retrieval problem is to maintain D as a data structure, such that when ever a query Q=(P, k) comes, we can report (the identifiers of) those k documents that are most relevant to the pattern P (of p characters). The relevance of a document d_r with respect to a pattern P is captured by score(P, d_r), which can be any function of the set of locations where P occurs in …

Mqvc: Measuring Quranic Verses Similarity And Sura Classification Using N-Gram, Mohammed Akour, Izzat Alsmadi, Iyad Alazzam

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extensive research efforts in the area of Information Retrieval were concentrated on developing retrieval systems related to Arabic language for the different natural language and information retrieval methodologies. However, little effort was conducted in those areas for knowledge extraction from the Holly Muslim book, the Quran. In this paper, we present an approach (MQVC) for retrieving the most similar verses in comparison with a user input verse as a query. To demonstrate the accuracy of our approach, we performed a set of experiments and compared the results with an evaluation from a Quran Specialist who manually identified all relevant chapters …

Design Of A Double-Stator Linear Switched Reluctance Motor For Shunting Railway Channels, El Manaa Barhoumi, Mansour Hajji, Boujemaa Ben Salah

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper presents the design and modeling of a double-stator linear switched reluctance motor for motorizing a railway channels' shunting system. The magnetic behavior of this actuator is nonlinear due to the saturation and nonlinear magnetization curves of the materials used in this actuator. For this reason, the electromagnetic quantities such as force, flux linkage, and inductance are calculated with the finite element method using the Maxwell tool. The obtained results are presented and discussed. In order to elaborate some control strategies, a new model for the proposed actuator, based on the flux and force characteristics, is validated by the …

Dynamic Simulation Of The Effect Of Tamper Resistance On Opioid Misuse Outcomes, Alexandra E. Nielsen, Wayne Wakeland

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of the study was to develop a system dynamics model of the medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, and the associated diversion and nonmedical use of these drugs. The model was used to test the impact of the a tamper resistance intervention in this complex system. The study relied on secondary data obtained from the literature and from other public sources for the period 1995 to 2008. In addition, an expert panel provided recommendations regarding model parameters and model structure. The behavior of the resulting systems-level model compared favorably with reference behavior data. After the base model was tested, …

Richardson Extrapolation-Based High Accuracy High Efficiency Computation For Partial Differential Equations, Ruxin Dai

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

In this dissertation, Richardson extrapolation and other computational techniques are used to develop a series of high accuracy high efficiency solution techniques for solving partial differential equations (PDEs).

A Richardson extrapolation-based sixth-order method with multiple coarse grid (MCG) updating strategy is developed for 2D and 3D steady-state equations on uniform grids. Richardson extrapolation is applied to explicitly obtain a sixth-order solution on the coarse grid from two fourth-order solutions with different related scale grids. The MCG updating strategy directly computes a sixth-order solution on the fine grid by using various combinations of multiple coarse grids. A multiscale multigrid (MSMG) method …

A Fault-Based Model Of Fault Localization Techniques, Mark A. Hays

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Every day, ordinary people depend on software working properly. We take it for granted; from banking software, to railroad switching software, to flight control software, to software that controls medical devices such as pacemakers or even gas pumps, our lives are touched by software that we expect to work. It is well known that the main technique/activity used to ensure the quality of software is testing. Often it is the only quality assurance activity undertaken, making it that much more important.

In a typical experiment studying these techniques, a researcher will intentionally seed a fault (intentionally breaking the functionality of …

Search Queries In An Information Retrieval System For Arabic-Language Texts, Zainab Majeed Albujasim

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Information retrieval aims to extract from a large collection of data a subset of information that is relevant to user’s needs. In this study, we are interested in information retrieval in Arabic-Language text documents. We focus on the Arabic language, its morphological features that potentially impact the implementation and performance of an information retrieval system and its unique characters that are absent in the Latin alphabet and require specialized approaches. Specifically, we report on the design, implementation and evaluation of the search functionality using the Vector Space Model with several weighting schemes. Our implementation uses the ISRI stemming algorithms as …

Depth-Assisted Semantic Segmentation, Image Enhancement And Parametric Modeling, Chenxi Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

This dissertation addresses the problem of employing 3D depth information on solving a number of traditional challenging computer vision/graphics problems. Humans have the abilities of perceiving the depth information in 3D world, which enable humans to reconstruct layouts, recognize objects and understand the geometric space and semantic meanings of the visual world. Therefore it is significant to explore how the 3D depth information can be utilized by computer vision systems to mimic such abilities of humans. This dissertation aims at employing 3D depth information to solve vision/graphics problems in the following aspects: scene understanding, image enhancements and 3D reconstruction and …

An Itk Implementation Of A Physics-Based Non-Rigid Registration Method For Brain Deformation In Image Guided Neurosurgery, Yixun Liu, Andriy Kot, Fotis Drakopoulos, Chengjun Yao, Andriy Fedorov, Andinet Enquobahrie, Oliver Clatz, Nikos P. Chrisochoides

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

As part of the ITK v4 project efforts, we have developed ITK filters for physics-based non-rigid registration (PBNRR), which satisfies the following requirements: account for tissue properties in the registration, improve accuracy compared to rigid registration, and reduce execution time using GPU and multi-core accelerators. The implementation has three main components: (1) Feature Point Selection, (2) Block Matching (mapped to both multi-core and GPU processors), and (3) a Robust Finite Element Solver. The use of multi-core and GPU accelerators in ITK v4 provides substantial performance improvements. For example, for the non-rigid registration of brain MRIs, the performance of the block …

Sensor Selection And Integration To Improve Video Segmentation In Complex Environments, Adam R. Reckley, Wei-Wen Hsu, Chung-Hao Chen, Gangfeng Ma, E-Wen Huang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Background subtraction is often considered to be a required stage of any video surveillance system being used to detect objects in a single frame and/or track objects across multiple frames in a video sequence. Most current state-of-the-art techniques for object detection and tracking utilize some form of background subtraction that involves developing a model of the background at a pixel, region, or frame level and designating any elements that deviate from the background model as foreground. However, most existing approaches are capable of segmenting a number of distinct components but unable to distinguish between the desired object of interest and …

Multi-Threaded Implementation Of Association Rule Mining With Visualization Of The Pattern Tree, Eera Gupta

LSU Master's Theses

Motor Vehicle fatalities per 100,000 population in the United States has been reported to be 10.69% in the year 2012 as per NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). The fatality rate has increased by 0.27% in 2012 compared to the rate in the year 2011. As per the reports, there are many factors involved in increasing the fatality rate drastically such as driving under influence, testing while driving, and various other weather phenomena. Decision makers need to analyze the factors attributing to the increase in an accident rate to take implied measures. Current methods used to perform the data analysis …

Adopting Star Plot For Visualization Of High Dimensional Multivariate Data, Shabana Sangli

LSU Master's Theses

The Star Plot is one of popular methods for visualization of multivariate data. This method displays each data record as a star-shaped icon by mapping all variables (dimensions) on radiating rays (axes) originated from a single point. The number of such icons is equal to the number of data items (records). As the number of dimensions and the size of data set increase, Star Plot visualization soon becomes too cluttered because many rays have to be accommodated within small circular area and individual icons also become too small. To overcome these problems associated with visualization of high-dimensional multivariate data, we …

A Toolkit For Tracking And Mediating Parametric Objects Upon Commodity Mobile Devices, Shantanu Thatte

LSU Master's Theses

The large number of mobile devices introduced in the market in recent years provide numerous interaction opportunities. We used commercially available products to create an interface for interaction with diverse datasets. We extended this scenario to include multiple physical instances, realizing a real-time multi-party interaction session. Tangibles act as tools and containers, in a fashion that requires their physical location and orientation to be evaluated continuously during a session. We present a technique to detect an object using only the touchscreen of a mobile device as an input, by means of touch patterns created on the screen. This helps avoid …

Improving Pre-Hospital Care At Mass Gathering Events: Applying Military Intelligence Methodology To The St John Ambulance Wa Event Health Operations, Alan James Davies

Theses : Honours

With the growth of the mass gathering event domain and its ever constant place within the contemporary Australian lifestyle, the number of patrons who attend these events that require medical assistance rises (Zeitz et al., 2007, p. 23; Zeitz, Zeitz, & Arbon, 2005, p. 164; Zeitz, Zeitz, & Kadow-Griffin, 2012). This increased demand and inherited risk to the event organiser, the patrons attending and the pre-hospital care or first aid provider creates a need for the investigation into enhancements to the medical care operations at these events. The provision of pre-hospital care at mass gathering events in Western Australia is …

Suitability Of Lacunarity Measure For Blind Steganalysis, Ahmed Ibrahim

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Blind steganalysis performance is influenced by several factors including the features used for classification. This paper investigates the suitability of using lacunarity measure as a potential feature vectorfor blind steganalysis. Differential Box Counting (DBC) based lacunarity measure has been employed using the traditional sequential grid (SG) and a new radial strip (RS) approach. The performance of the multi-class SVM based classifier was unfortunately not what was expected. However, the findings show that both the SG and RS lacunarity produce enough discriminating features that warrant further research.

Finding Evidence Of Wordlists Being Deployed Against Ssh Honeypots – Implications And Impacts, Priya Rabadia, Craig Valli

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

This paper is an investigation focusing on activities detected by three SSH honeypots that utilise Kippo honeypot software. The honeypots were located on the same /24 IPv4 network and configured as identically as possible. The honeypots used the same base software and hardware configurations. The data from the honeypots were collected during the period 17th July 2012 and 26th November 2013, a total of 497 active day periods. The analysis in this paper focuses on the techniques used to attempt to gain access to these systems by attacking entities. Although all three honeypots are have the same configuration settings and …

Using Internet Artifacts To Profile A Child Pornography Suspect, Marcus K. Rogers, Kathryn C. Seigfried-Spellar

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital evidence plays a crucial role in child pornography investigations. However, in the following case study, the authors argue that the behavioral analysis or “profiling” of digital evidence can also play a vital role in child pornography investigations. The following case study assessed the Internet Browsing History (Internet Explorer Bookmarks, Mozilla Bookmarks, and Mozilla History) from a suspected child pornography user’s computer. The suspect in this case claimed to be conducting an ad hoc law enforcement investigation. After the URLs were classified (Neutral; Adult Porn; Child Porn; Adult Dating sites; Pictures from Social Networking Profiles; Chat Sessions; Bestiality; Data Cleaning; …

On Cyber Attacks And Signature Based Intrusion Detection For Modbus Based Industrial Control Systems, Wei Gao, Thomas H. Morris

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Industrial control system communication networks are vulnerable to reconnaissance, response injection, command injection, and denial of service attacks. Such attacks can lead to an inability to monitor and control industrial control systems and can ultimately lead to system failure. This can result in financial loss for control system operators and economic and safety issues for the citizens who use these services. This paper describes a set of 28 cyber attacks against industrial control systems which use the MODBUS application layer network protocol. The paper also describes a set of standalone and state based intrusion detection system rules which can be …